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Miami - Florida residents braced for days for Hurricane Irma, which encompassed nearly the entire peninsula as it marched north through the state.

When day broke, many got their first glimpse of the storm's destruction. Some expressed relief that they had appeared to have dodged a bullet.

Others were clearly shaken by a storm more powerful than many had ever seen.

Their stories provide a glimpse into the extensive reach of Irma's wrath:

A NEW HOME, LEFT BEHIND

Felicia Clark and Johnny Thompson spent Saturday moving into their new house in St Petersburg, on Florida's Gulf Coast. After a long day, with forecasts on the late news showing that Irma was headed their way, they decided to leave it behind.

They packed some clothes and toiletries and hopped in the car around 01:00 on Sunday with their two dogs, Gracie and Roscoe. They headed north, making it all the way to downtown Atlanta before they found a hotel with rooms available.

Caught in traffic with others who'd decided to flee the storm, the drive that should have taken about seven hours took more than 14.

They've spent much of their time in Atlanta watching storm coverage on television. When Thompson took the dogs out for a walk in nearby Centennial Olympic Park on Sunday night, he met numerous other evacuated Florida residents.

Clark and Thompson were worried about their new home, but word finally arrived from family members who stayed behind.

Some tree limbs fell in their yard, but the house wasn't damaged.

GRATEFUL, BUT WORRIED

Gwen Bush watched from her window early on Monday morning as the water rose around her central Florida home. She had been sitting in darkness for hours as she listened to trees snap and water bubble.

When it began to seep under her front door, she thought of the scenes of Hurricane Harvey in Texas that she had seen on TV.

"I was scared to death, I thought I was gonna die," she said. "I can't swim and the water kept rising; it was all the way up to my windows. I actually thought I was not going to live through this. I started praying."

Bush saw the National Guard and firefighters outside with boats and big trucks. She grabbed a hurricane kit she'd packed the day before, pushed open the door, and waded through thigh-deep water to reach the rescuers, who took her to a shelter a few kilometres away.

As day broke, she was grateful to be alive - but worried about the future. She had frantically tried to stack her belongings on top of beds and cabinets as the water rushed in, but she assumes she probably lost almost everything in her rented home.

Bush, 50, works as a security guard at a sports and music venue in Orlando, and only gets paid when she works. Concerts and shows have been canceled in the days leading up to the storm, and she's not sure when she'll be able to get back to work.

As the storm closed in, she spent the last $10 she had on food and water. now she has nothing left but the red sweatsuit she escaped in. Even her shoes were ruined by the water and muck.

"How are we gonna survive from here?" she asked. "What's going to happen now? I just don't know."

WORSE THAN ANDREW

West of Miami, in Sweetwater, the din of chainsaws and generators filled the Monday morning air. Irma's floodwaters had inundated streets and lapped at people's doors as the storm stomped through, but mostly receded a day later.

Fallen trees lined streets along with cars that got stuck in floodwaters. On the town's main drag, weary-eyed residents cleared branches, while city trucks with giant metal claws plucked away bigger debris.

Jesus Castillo, 50, said at least 30cm of water pooled outside his home. "My entire patio was underwater," he said.

Around the corner, a group of friends helped a woman clear a large tree that had splintered like a toothpick. Over the backyard fence, 62-year-old Bayardo Perez wrestled with a mangled tin shed roof. He has lived in the house for decades and carries memories of previous storms.

"This one was worse than Andrew for me," he said, finally getting the crumpled roof free and walking off to throw it on a pile of debris.

SWAMPED BUT RESILIENT

In Bonita Springs, on the Gulf Coast south of Fort Myers, Kelly McClenthen and her boyfriend, Daniel Harrison, put on waders to enter her neighbourhood on Monday and they needed them - about 1.5m of river water stood under her home, which is on stilts.

The main living area was fine, she said, but everything on the ground level was destroyed.

"My washer and dryer are floating around in my utility room," she said.

The same area flooded during a storm about two weeks ago, Harrison said, and that cleanup was still a work in progress.

Now they'll start over.

"We weathered it out. We've got a lot of damage, a lot of cleanup. But we'll get through it. No doubt," said Harrison.

SEEKING SHELTER AND TRYING TO KEEP DRY

At Germain Arena in Estero, south of Fort Myers, where thousands sought shelter from the storm, people sat amid puddles on the concrete floor on Monday morning. Rainwater leaked at the height of the storm.

"Irma went over and we were all like, 'Oh good, we survived'. And then all of a sudden, some of the panels came off the roof, I guess, and we started getting water pouring down in different places," said evacuee Mary Fitzgerald, 61. "It was like, 'Oh my God, what is going to happen?'"

The water stopped coming in after the eyewall passed, and people were streaming out to go check on their homes as the sun came up.

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